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10 Indie African Films You May Not Have Seen (But Should)

10 Indie African Films You May Not Have Seen (But Should)

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We’ve seen the horrors of slavery set to Quincy Jones’s beautiful score in “Roots,” or Meryl Streep staring off into the Kenyan horizon, pining for Robert Redford’s biplane to swoop down and save her from a life of boredom. But that’s Hollywood, baby. Here are some films made by independent African film makers from the continent, ranging from apartheid sci-fi to very intimate Senegalese tribal drama. Some of these indie African films are Oscar-worthy; others you’ll need to excavate online to find. All of them are beautiful, invaluable depictions of culture, history, and landscapes of Africa.

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 “Tsotsi” (Directed by Gavin Hood).

The only film from the African continent to win Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (2005), “Tsotsi” (which means “thug” in South African slang), provides the gritty reality of the slums in Johannesburg, and an unforgettable central character (played by Presley Chweneyange), who finds redemption from his life as a gang leader when he saves a discarded baby from the backseat of a car he steals. Halting and turbulent, yet at times bright and hopeful, the film follow Tsotsi running from a life of destitution to a discovery of paternal tenderness. This is a must-see.

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“District 9”  (Directed by Neil Bloomkamp)

A landmark independent box-office sensation and Oscar-nominee for Best Picture of 2010, this allegory of apartheid in South Africa is painted via a shipwrecked giant extraterrestrial mothership over Johannesburg. The alien residents — who resemble giant cockroaches and prefer full cans of cat food for sustenance — are brutally quarantined by the government into ghettoized shantytowns, which hauntingly reflect the actual Bantustan slums mandated for segregated black South African residents. At once exciting, humorous (mainly because of the bumbling hero played by Sharlto Copley) and an unfortunate reflection of how those in power treat a lesser, different-looking race, “District 9” is a modern classic.

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 “Moolaade”  (Directed by Ousmene Sembene).

A famous Senegalese writer/director, Sembene (“Black Girl”) has dropped us into an intimate, exclusive village in Burkina Faso, which practices female genital mutilation as religious tradition. “Moolaade,” meaning “magical protection,” comes in the form of Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly), a courageous woman who protects the young girls from their obligatory sacrifices, despite the frightening ramifications in store from the male law-enforcing elders. The exposition is rough, but the film is fun-loving, chock-full of delightful rebels, smiling moments of feminine solidarity, and a pressing charge for equality conveyed by Sembene to the sub-Saharan tribes that still enact these awful practices. “Moolaade” pushes gender equality and the rewards of innovative, egalitarian thinking.

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Cairo Station”  (Directed by Youssef Chahine).

This black and white Egyptian film from 1958 was truly ahead of its time. While in the U.S., movies in the late 50s were rife with suggestive taboo subjects like homosexuality, adultery, and obsession (see any Douglas Sirk film and you’ll know), Chahine’s film delves right into these motifs — not without, of course, the scathing reaction from Egyptian public and decency boards. Chronicling a crippled newspaper seller (Chahine himself) who becomes sexually infatuated with a lemonade vendor (Hind Rostom, one of Egypt’s most famous starlets), it is initially bold through its delightful brazenness (like the rock music dance number in the train car), and more daring through the darker, sinister Hitchcockian tones it adopts along the way. Hailed by many as one of the greatest Arabic-language films of all time, “Cairo Station” is a cinephile’s dream.

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“Cry, the Beloved Country” (Directed by Darrell Roodt)

We travel back to apartheid-era South Africa for this popular 1995 film, starring beloved, deep-voiced James Earl Jones and the indelible Richard Harris. They are two men of different cultural backgrounds – a black African preacher and a white apartheid endorser — suffering in similar ways from the murder of a young white South African man during the nascent stages of institutionalized segregation in 1948. Based on the best-selling book by Alan Paton, featuring music by Enya, sweeping panoramas of the mountainous countryside, and memorable supporting performances (especially by Charles S. Dutton), this is one of the most significant and triumphant films to come out of new South Africa.

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“Hyenas”  (directed by Djibril Diop Mambity).

This is as esoteric and independent as African cinema comes. A tiny Senegalese film which erupted in the early 90s into a film school cult following, this is a dark comedy with a Shakespearean enormity to it. A wealthy former resident of an impoverished Senegalese village returns with promises of riches to the people she left behind, under one stipulation: somebody must murder the local grocer who scorned her as a younger woman. This is a jaunty but dark-sided meditation on greed and the mechanisms of Western capitalism which destroy simple traditions of poorer African nations. The hyenas in question are the ravenous villagers, no better than hungry beasts when selling themselves out for wealth.

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        The Gods Must be Crazy” (directed by James Uys)

      In a sea of entirely relevant yet heartbreaking films, here is the most fun-loving of them all. In this early ’80s Botswana/South Africa madcap gem, we follow the plight of, unbelievably, a Coca-Cola bottle, dropped from heavenly heights (actually, from the airplane of an ignorant litterer) onto the sand in front of a San tribesman. The Coke bottle is nothing his village has ever seen before. Hijinks ensue; how can each respective villager live without possessing this holy tool at all times? This could have been a setup for a more hellish reflection on greed and collective self-destruction, but it decides to infuse itself with slapstick, (including a scene where the hero attempts to throw the bottle back up to the gods.

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    “War Witch” (directed by Kim Nguyen)

O   OK so it’s actually a Canadian film, but seldom has the brutality of sub-Saharan child soldiers been as viscerally and urgently portrayed as here. Set and filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this Oscar-nominated film centers on Komona (remarkable newcomer Rachel Mwanza, Best Actress winner at the Berlin Film Festival), coined “war witch” by the ruthless general of the army who forced her recruitment and the murder of her parents. This label preserves her guerrilla status and her life until she escapes with a companion, a haunted albino boy soldier she develops tender feelings toward. Images both nightmarish and childlike-dreamy pervade this film’s frames, as the ghosts of her crimes follow her. This is a violent and grim, but understanding, coming-of age film.

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www.nookinthewoods.wordpress.com

    “Yeelen” (Souleymane Cisse)

      Here we are in Mali, witnessing “Yeelen,” or “brightness” of the Bambara people of the 13th century Malian Empire. A young man’s spiritual path to adulthood includes placing himself at odds with his sorcerer father, who is bent on killing off his son in order to block his ascension to power. The themes are quite Oedipal and heavy, but the film relies on the majesty of depicting the earth’s creation, sorcery, and cosmic wanderings (all set to a hybrid modern jazz/classic instrumental score), as well sparse dialogue and sustained visual power which carry us to the ultimate father-son battle. A substantial critically-lauded treasure, this film is steeped in rich Malian history.

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    “Days of Glory” (Directed by Rachid Bouchareb)

      It’s World War II, and the French Army is forcefully recruiting Muslim soldiers from colonized Algeria to fight the Germans in Europe. The four leading men — popular film stars in France — are incredible, and shared a joint Best Actor prize for this film at Cannes. The forgotten, pushed-aside depiction of how the indigenes (indigenous Algerians of the French Empire) were treated by a country they fought and perished for is dragged to the surface here. So rousing and popular was this film in Europe that former President Jacques Chirac lifted the decades-long, unjust suspension on former French colony veteran pensions after viewing it. This film was Algeria’s entry for Best Foreign Film in the Oscars in 2006.